You could have called anyone, but you called me. It was at 4 am, you wanted to tell me you'd had sex with a dude, but I didn't answer, so you told me on the bus the next day.

We were going to get lunch. Though you'd been back in town, we hadn't seen much of each other, just the occasional lunch, but I was kinda used to the distance that had been born between us.

Besides, you called me.

Your hair was a greasy empire and your eyes were red as hell, but you were in a good mood. We sat side by side on the bus when you said it. There was a long silence beforehand, as if you were thinking about the wording ("Should I say man, or dude?" you probably thought...) but eventually you just blurted it out: "I had sex with a dude last night."

I was.

Confused.

Not unaccepting, just questioning. You'd had sex with women, many women. I had sex with women too. It was hard to fathom the sudden switch. I'm sure it wasn't subtle for you. I looked into your mind and imagined meticulous ice sculptures forming your being, when, in reality, they were probably more like shapeless puddles of water, or maybe a green lake with ripples that looked frozen in time.

I asked questions like:

"But... why?"

"Did it hurt?"

"But... why?"

"Did you do the dude, or did the dude do you?" ("Both," you'd said. I hadn't thought of the possibility of both.)

"But... why?" I couldn't stop asking. I offered some of myself when attempting to figure it out: "Sometimes I'll look at, like, shemale porn. Chicks with dicks. Sometimes I'll look at that to see what it's like. But just, I donno..."

I stopped talking. I don't know if I deal with change well, DJ. Not the change of you havin' sex with a dude or whatever, that was actually pretty easy to deal with. The change of me and you and us. The change of friends. That was harder.

I shook my head. You sat there smiling sheepishly, probably nervous as hell, but clearly you trusted me enough to tell me all this, even if we never saw each other anymore, you wanted me to be the first person you talked to. And nothing else mattered. We didn't need to see each other every day, talk every night, invite each other to every party, concert and dinner. We didn't need to sleep in bunk beds, next to each other in sleeping bags, or have to share an air mattress slowly running out of air. You were in my life. Even when we go a month, six months, a year(!) without seeing each other, I can't shrug you off of me. We're like continents dividing, I guess, but we'll always be stuck on the same damn earth.

We went on talking, mostly about comic books, both of us content to not ask or answer more questions. We were just happy to be riding the bus together, acutely aware of the woman a few seats away from us—the one in a Blackhawks jersey—that was giving us the stinkiest of stink eyes.

Bitch was just jealous of how happy we were.

And are.

And that's what matters.

- MJ